What Happens If Trump *Doesn’t* Get Impeached?

A friend recently shared the attached image, to illustrate the derangement of at least one Trump hating individual. For those who missed the news, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman resigned effective today, after a story broke in The New Yorker magazine alleging that he sexually abused and assaulted four women. Schneiderman, who had latched onto the #metoo movement and styled himself a champion of women’s rights, denied the allegations, calling them “role-play,” but quit anyway.

The TDS-infected mouth-foamer who apparently would rather Schneiderman, who had gubernatorial ambitions and was actively dogging Trump in the courts, stick around so he could continue to fight the good fight that would eventually lead to Trump’s impeachment. Not wishing to dog-pile this dumbass, I’ve redacted the tweeter’s identifiers. I bring the matter to your attention, instead, because it posits a relevant question:

What happens if Trump finishes out his term, instead of being driven from office?

Sixteen months ago, before Trump took office, I could understand trepidations regarding what the Untethered Orange Id might do. His talk was coarse, his diplomacy and tact nonexistent, and his scattergun proclamations left many deeply worried about both the direction of the nation and the state of world affairs.

Today, however, and despite his annoying obsession with Twitter (and with capitals and with exclamation points), we have a better measure of the man, in practice. His coarse, taunting obnoxiousness on social media continues to provide head-scratching and face-palming moments (along with enough fodder to keep CNN and MSNBC happily occupied), and a miasma of turpitude continues to hover around his cotton-candy coif, but the fears of world conflagration or domestic destruction have proven unfounded, so far. In action, he’s governed like the mix of populist and conservative that he advertised, and it’s reasonable, at this juncture, to expect that the Republic will survive Donald J. Trump.

Just as it has survived his 44 predecessors. Barring his highly unlikely removal from office, in 2020, Americans will go to vote for a President for the 57th time in the nation’s history, and either Trump will be re-elected or not. What happens between now and then cannot be wholly predicted, but the notion that several women who were allegedly slapped and roughed up during sex-by-intimidation should keep their mouths shut and suffer in silence rather than outing a powerful anti-Trump politician, that they should sacrifice themselves in order to further the effort to impeach Trump, is offensive in any context, and doubly so in a time where powerful sleaze balls are finally getting their long-overdue comeuppance.

Yesterday I addressed the concerns about NeverTrump conservatives regarding the long-term effects of Trump on their party, and suggested that there’s nothing to be gained by continuing to seek Trump’s removal from office. I offer the same advice to the Left’s NeverTrump stalwarts. If you have to build your ImpeachTrump movement on the broken souls of women, for example, you really need to sort out your priorities. And – to what end? What do you think will happen if you and your party successfully impeach Trump? Or, by some miracle, actually drive him out of office? The former is quite possible, especially if the current prognostications of a Democratic takeover of the House prove out. The latter is highly unlikely, given the much higher hurdle that must be surmounted. But, say you succeed, in either impeachment or actual removal from office?

What happens next? Concerns about lasting damage done to the Republic by Trump should take a distant back seat to the chaos that would be wrought in the long run by forcing Trump out on obscure or convoluted grounds (as I noted yesterday, if some new, substantive evidence of treasonous action come forth, things change. We don’t have that today, but ImpeachTrumpers aren’t letting that get in their way).

Again, the Republic will survive Trump. If impeachment efforts fail, business will carry on. Trump will do as he has been doing, i.e. roiling the media and those who follow politics with his tweets and bombast, engaging in relatively mainstream policy activities, and working international diplomacy in an unorthodox style that isn’t going to blow up the world. You may not like some (or all) of his policies (I certainly have many that I disagree with), but that’s how politics rolls, and such was the case with every single past President in our history. If your ImpeachTrump effort fails, what will you say to the people who’ve been run roughshod in its pursuit? That a few eggs had to be broken to make an omelet? How does that make you any better than those you despise?

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

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My question is can Trump win the nomination in 2020 and if he does then how about the election.
I think it highly likely that the Republicans will nominate somebody else, but if they do what does Trump do, probably run as a third party candidate. This would split the vote and we’d have a Democrat in the White House (See Roosevelt, Bull Moose party and Woodrow Wilson).

Maybe we get lucky and Trump decides he can’t win and bows out gracefully before the primary…

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I think you are assuming a spine in the GOP that it has demonstrably not exhibited. Barring a major turn of events, I don’t see how the party decides to anger its base by defenestrating a sitting President.

Besides, “he can’t win” is what everyone was saying 18 months ago. This far from the next election, there’s no way to make such a prognostication.